


With One Touch

by Brumeier



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Antagonism, First Kiss, First Meetings, Illnesses, M/M, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:48:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28460430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/pseuds/Brumeier
Summary: Rodney and John are strangers who discover, upon accidentally touching in public, that they're soulmates. Suddenly they find themselves having to make a life-altering choice, when having a soulmate was something neither of them wanted.Inspired bythis Tumblr prompt.
Relationships: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard
Comments: 26
Kudos: 122
Collections: SGA Saturday Prompt Challenge





	With One Touch

**Author's Note:**

> Also written for:
> 
> sga_Saturday: stubble, stumble  
> ficlet_zone: Criminal Minds – Soul Mate

Rodney's life changed because he was too busy to replace his gloves.

Well, there were other factors. The text that made him look at his phone instead of where he was walking. The driver that was fiddling with the environmental controls and not giving the roadway her full attention. The city for their continued inability to fill the potholes on Fairfax Avenue.

_Latest test 39% positive._

Rodney's thumbs jabbed angrily at the phone as he formulated his response, and he was only vaguely aware of the holes in his gloves. He needed to make a mental note to have Olivia get him a new pair. He needed to --

He stepped off the curb and almost immediately caught his foot on the lip of a particularly deep pothole. He stumbled forward, fumbling his phone and almost dropping it. His relief was short-lived, though, because there was the hood of a bright red car seemingly inches from his face.

The next thing Rodney knew, someone grabbed him around the waist, pulled him back and away, and threw him half on the sidewalk and half in the gutter. The cell phone he'd been so proud of not dropping mere seconds before shattered, but he barely noticed because of the shooting pain in his knee, his elbows, the palms of his hands.

"Ow! Fuck! Are you crazy?"

Rodney addressed the hip of the person who'd tossed him, which was on the curb and in Rodney's direct eyeline. 

"So you were _trying_ to get hit by that car?" A man's voice, sounding just as irritated as Rodney felt.

He got up first and offered his hand to Rodney. He was wearing high-end black leather gloves, thin and supple, and the body attached to the end of that arm was tall and lean and not bad looking. Rodney took the offered hand and got painfully to his feet, and that should have been the end of it. He'd thank the stranger and get back to work.

The stranger used just a bit too much force, though, and Rodney's hand slipped. He grabbed for purchase and wrapped his hand around the guy's bare wrist. Too late, he remembered the holes in the thumbs of his own gloves.

That first touch, that almost insignificant amount of skin touching skin, was exactly how other people had described it. Everything around Rodney and the stranger stopped: the traffic, the noise, the breeze. It was like they'd fallen out of step with the rest of the world for one starkly brief moment.

"Oh, fuck," the stranger said. Rodney echoed the sentiment.

He'd found his soulmate.

*o*o*o*

Rodney wrote a harshly worded letter to the DOT about the dangerous potholes, and chewed Olivia out for not keeping track of the wear and tear on his gloves, and fired off a panicked email to his sister Jeannie telling her what happened.

He looked at the empty drawer where a stash of gloves should’ve been, if he hadn’t been too busy to get some. It was weird to think he’d never need to wear them again.

Bare hands were the least of his worries. Rodney was starting to feel sick to his stomach for no good reason, and one very bad reason – John. A stupid side-effect of the soulmate thing, which so far seemed to be nothing but trouble. There was a reason the majority of right-thinking people took every precaution to avoid skin-on-skin contact.

Rodney’s twisted stomach loosened up the moment someone started pounding loudly on his door.

“Open up, McKay!”

Rodney scowled as he flung open his front door. “What the hell do you want?”

“You know what.” John pushed past him, his expression clearly radiating his anger. “This is all your fault.”

“Excuse me? You’re the one who threw me on the sidewalk!”

“Because you were wandering into traffic! You’re the one with the holes in his gloves!”

Rodney and John glowered at each other from across the room, the silence between them boiling with frustration.

“I don’t need a soulmate,” Rodney snapped. “I’m a very busy man.”

“Well, I don’t want one either.”

“Fine!”

“Great!”

John headed back to the door, then stopped with his hand on the knob. “I can’t leave.”

“Yes, you can,” Rodney urged. “It’s a pull, not a push.”

“I get killer migraines when I’m not with you,” John ground out, and it sounded like it really cost him to say it. 

“I suggest you suck it up.”

John gave Rodney a narrow-eyed look over his shoulder. “Fine. If you can do it, I can do it.”

He slammed out of the house, and the second he stepped off the front porch, Rodney’s stomach knotted up again.

“I just need a Tums,” Rodney grumbled.

*o*o*o*

Rodney lasted three days, during which time he ate probably a thousand antacids, consumed two bottles of Pepto, tried every home remedy the internet suggested, and endured a lengthy lecture from his sister on being responsible and doing the right thing.

“Why the hell hasn’t someone figured out a way to turn this off?” Rodney griped, pushing into John’s living room. “It’s utterly inconceivable that we can eradicate deadly diseases, but a soulmate-induced stomachache is untouchable.”

“Hello to you too,” John said, closing the front door. 

He looked like crap, his face pale and pinched. Migraines, Rodney remembered, instead of the agonizing stomach pains he’d been suffering through. The ones that magically bled away as soon as he was in proximity with John. Rodney tried not to let the relief he felt show on his face. Instead, he looked around John’s minimalist living room.

“What is this? Is it that Scandinavian thing?”

The room was very bright, despite the blinds being drawn and not a single lamp turned on – light gray paint, light wood furniture – and there was only a sleek-looking sofa and an armchair to sit on, both of them draped with fuzzy-looking blankets.

“I don’t know. I’m not an interior decorator.” John sat on the sofa and picked up the book that had been lying there, facedown and open to whatever page he’d been on. If he was trying to ignore Rodney, he was sadly out of his league.

“So what are you, then?” Rodney paced around the space, noting with interest the video game console and the very large TV mounted to the wall. “Joker? Smoker? Midnight toker?”

John’s lips twitched up, so briefly Rodney thought he imagined it.

“I’m an ex-Air Force pilot.”

“A flyboy, eh? Yeah, you seem the type.”

John frowned and looked up from his book, one of those Russian novels that seemed incredibly boring. “What type is that?”

Rodney gestured at him. “Just look at you! I’ve worked with my fair share of pilots. Trust me.”

“Oh, yeah? What are you? A flight attendant?”

Rodney bristled at that. “That would be a steward, which I’m not. I’ll have you know I own the foremost space exploration company in your entire stupid country, and I’m _this_ close to getting the first moon base established.”

That got John’s attention. He put his book down. 

“You’re MRM Innovations?”

“No, I’m the _founder_ of MRM Innovations. I’m also the CEO and lead aeronautical engineer. So you can see why I don’t have time to do this soulmate thing.”

“You want a beer?” John asked.

*o*o*o*

John wasn’t such a bad guy. Over beers, and then lunch, and then dinner, they talked about themselves and what they wanted their futures to be. Rodney was confident in his career trajectory, had been since he was five years old. He was going to be instrumental in pioneering space travel and exploration and moving the human race off the planet Earth.

“Star Trek or Star Wars?” John asked.

“Trek. By a narrow margin.”

John, on the other hand, was metaphorically at sea. The US military had parted ways with him for typically stupid reasons – he’d been trying to save someone’s life against orders – and he didn’t know what else he wanted to do with his life.

“All I ever wanted to do was fly,” he admitted, one hand rubbing against his stubbly chin like he was embarrassed by the admission.

“You seem like a smart guy, apart from throwing strangers around,” Rodney said. “I assume you’re aware there are other options besides the military.”

“I like things that go fast.”

Rodney had no doubt about that. He wasn’t big on air travel, which he knew was stupidly ironic, but he imagined it was hard to think about flying commercial airliners after having broken the sound barrier.

He and John talked about everything but their situation, despite all the looks they were getting in the restaurant because their hands were bare. They were still being cautious, not reaching for anything at the same time even though the touch wouldn’t matter anymore.

“So what are we going to do?” Rodney asked when the after-dinner coffee was served with dessert.

John poked at his slice of apple pie. “Only two options. We move forward with the bond, or we do a chemical break.”

Rodney wished there was a third option. John seemed like a good guy, if a little aimless. The two of them had a surprising amount in common and spending the day with him hadn’t been boring. That didn’t mean Rodney wanted to tie himself to the guy for the rest of his life. On the other hand, he’d heard terrible things about the medical treatment that was only eight-two percent effective in dissolving a soulbond.

“Let’s think about this logically,” Rodney said. “Hanging out with you hasn’t been terrible –”

“Gee, thanks.”

“And it makes the most sense to maintain proximity until we figure out a better plan than putting toxic chemicals in our bodies. Since you’re unemployed –”

“Between jobs.”

“You should come with me to work tomorrow. I’m sure I can find something useful for you to do.” Rodney nodded. “I’m a genius. I’ll be able to figure this out.”

John gave him a considering look. “Can I take a look at the rocket?”

“I guess I could fit in a quick tour,” Rodney said grudgingly.

John grinned and started eating his pie with more enthusiasm. “Cool. So…You’re place or mine?”

*o*o*o*

“Was it like the movies?” Miko asked, wide-eyed.

“What is your next move?” Radek asked.

Rodney sighed. “I suppose it’s too much to ask that everyone gets back to work?”

He’d tried to be super casual about bringing John to the office, but word had spread like wildfire through the labs. Everyone wanted to know what that first touch had felt like, and what Rodney and John were going to do next. 

As if they had a plan.

John had stayed at Rodney’s house the night before, because neither one had wanted to deal with the literal pain of separation and Rodney had a cat to take care of. It had been strange, trying to sleep with John sacked out on the couch in the other room. The pull between them was so strong it was a little scary. He could imagine all too well slipping through the darkened apartment and just throwing himself at John.

All the literature said committing to a soulbond was a life-altering choice. The separation pains would go away, and everything would be kittens and rainbows and unicorns. 

Fuck unicorns.

“I don’t suppose any of you supposed ‘top minds’ have anything useful to tell me about getting out of this soulmate thing without the chemical break?”

Radek looked thoughtful, but Miko looked scandalized.

“Why would you want to get out of it? Having a soulmate is amazing!”

“Having a soulmate in a _movie_ is amazing,” Rodney corrected. “If you look at it logically –”

“This is not logical,” Radek interrupted. “This is fate.”

“Besides, John is really handsome.”

“Will you two give me a break?” Rodney snapped. “The work we’re doing here is too important. I can’t afford to get side-tracked by a bunch of mumbo-jumbo destiny crap.”

Radek looked at him over the top of his glasses, which had slid down his nose again. “He is a pilot, no?”

“Former Air Force.”

“Do we not need pilots?”

“I don’t know what…huh.” Honestly, all the soulmate stuff was getting in the way of Rodney’s higher brain functions. Radek was right. John was a pilot, one who admittedly liked going fast and had already been geeking out over the moon base program.

“That’s brilliant!” Miko said, favoring Radek with a warm smile. “Fate steps in! You should put him through the training.”

“What training?” John asked. He came through the door with the guy in charge of the spaceflight training program, Jack O’Neill, who was former Air Force himself.

“You thinking of adding him to my team?” O’Neill asked. “He’s got the chops for it.”

Rodney weighed his options. John being on site every day would help with the separation problem. And if O’Neill thought he’d be good, who was Rodney to argue? As a private company looking to put men into space, they’d fielded their fair share of lunatics who had the drive but lacked the skill. And often any common sense.

John seemed to have a good head on his shoulders, and if he could get through the training he’d definitely be an asset to the program.

“Wait,” he said. “You want me to do astronaut training?”

“You’d get to go really fast,” Rodney said. “And be at the forefront of space exploration in our lifetime.”

“Can I have a minute to think about it?” John didn’t wait for a reply before pulling a coin out of his pocket and flipping it in the air. 

“You can’t make this kind of decision on the flip of a coin!” Rodney protested. “It’s not scientific!”

“Good thing I’m not a scientist,” John replied with a smirk. He caught the coin on the back of his hand and looked at it for a long minute.

“Well?” Miko asked. “Don’t keep us in suspense!”

“Where do I sign?”

Rodney shouldn’t have felt so overwhelmingly relieved. But he did.

*o*o*o*

By the end of the first week, John and Rodney had settled into a routine.

Rodney cleared out the extra bedroom, which had become a dumping ground for spare electronic components and academic journals, and fitted it out with a proper bed so John didn’t have to keep sleeping on the couch. Rodney’s cat, Butterscotch, didn’t care for the changes and had taken to hiding in the closet.

John needed to be up and out early for O’Neill’s training program, but Rodney didn’t sleep much anyway and used the extra time in the office to deal with the mundane bits of the business he normally foisted off on his assistant.

They ate together, played video games and watched movies together. The only time they were really apart was when John went jogging in the evenings (though after a couple nights of that, Rodney started accompanying John on his electric bicycle) and when John was training.

“How are you feeling?” Radek asked curiously. “Your discomfort seems less today.”

Rodney looked up from his simulation results. “What? Oh. I’m fine.”

“Perhaps it is the constant exposure.”

“I didn’t realize you were a theoretical biologist as well as an astrophysicist,” Rodney replied bitingly. “Can we focus on these results? The thrusters are still only at 48% efficiency. What are we missing?”

Truth was Rodney was pleased with how things were going. He and John hadn’t had to commit to the soulmate thing, and they were doing just fine. The pain of separation was still there, but significantly more bearable.

It was like they found a loophole. Beat the system.

Fate, as Miko would’ve said, didn’t like to be challenged.

*o*o*o*

“His scores are showing consistent decrease in all areas,” O’Neill said. “His reaction time is down and continuing to decline.”

“Well, that’s disappointing,” Rodney said.

He was being truthful. Having John on the team had been exciting, and Rodney had enjoyed spending so much time with him. But if John couldn’t do the job, they’d have to figure out what that meant for the two of them, and so far they’d been doing a fine job of _not_ having to figure things out.

“Not just John,” Radek said. “Rodney, you are making mistakes you would never make.”

He passed over a datapad, which Rodney snatched from his hands. He felt sick. Not because he’d made such obvious errors, but because even with Radek having red-flagged them, Rodney couldn’t figure out why they were wrong. 

His deepest, darkest fear was coming true. He was losing his mind.

“You two idiots are still unbonded, aren’t you?” O’Neill shook his head, an expression of disgust on his face.

“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.” Now he was lying, because that was the only thing that made logical sense. Rodney had thought they were gaming the system, but what was it they always said in movies? The house always wins?

O’Neill stood up and put his hands flat on the conference table. “I’m suspending Sheppard until you get this sorted out. Right now he’s a liability.”

“I must insist on same,” Radek said with slightly less confidence. “It is time to decide.”

Rodney argued for the sake of form, but his heart wasn’t in it. He packed up his laptop and went out to the car, expecting John to be there but knowing from the way his gut was twisting up that he wouldn’t be.

The drive home seemed to take hours. Rodney cursed the stupid biology that had created soulmates to begin with. It was so random. But it had been nice, for a while, not having to wear gloves or make sure he wasn’t close enough to anyone to accidentally touch them. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t though about kissing John, just naked lips pressed together with no mouth guard between them. What would that be like?

It was worse when Rodney got home. The house seemed empty in a way it never had before. It was alarming, how quickly he’d gotten used to having John there. John had filled up empty spaces Rodney didn’t even realize he had.

“Fucking fate,” he grumbled. 

He crawled into bed, miserable and conflicted. His stomach was in knots, he was probably losing brain cells by the second, and he wished John had just let that car hit him. It would’ve been the least complicated option.

Rodney didn’t know how long he lay there, wallowing. He drifted in and out of sleep, barely noticing the way the light changed as the day dragged on and the sun went down. He had no idea what time it was when he woke up and realized his stomach didn’t hurt anymore.

The bedroom was full dark by then and he had that fuzzy-headed, groggy feeling that came from getting too much sleep. Or maybe that was effect of not accepting the soulbond and he’d feel like that forever. Rodney sat up, rubbing his hands over his face, and reached for the bedside lamp.

“Don’t,” John said.

Rodney cursed, snatching his hand back like he’d been burnt. “Damn it! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

Now that he was looking, he could see the vague shape of John, sitting on the floor by the bedroom door, his back against the wall.

“Sorry.”

“Where have you been?”

“Nowhere. Just trying to figure things out.”

Rodney was afraid to ask, but he had to anyway. “Did you? Figure things out?”

The funny thing was Rodney had thought he was still at odds about what to do. But in that moment, he was absolutely certain what he wanted John’s answer to be. 

“I didn’t want any of this,” John replied. He sounded different, somehow. There was a depth of emotion in his voice Rodney never heard before. “But you know what? I need it.”

“The flying, you mean.” Clarification, because Rodney needed to know. He had to understand the parameters before he could add his own input.

“That. And you.” John’s shape changed as he stood up. 

Rodney wished he could see John’s face. It would make knowing what to do so much easier.

“I want to touch you,” John said. “I want you to touch me.”

Rodney felt a shiver of anticipation down his spine at the intensity of those words. He knew what John meant. It was human nature to want to be touched. To be held. To be hugged. It was why some people threw caution to the wind and went to soulmate parties where no-one wore protective clothing, hoping someone there would be the right someone, the one time would stand still for.

It was primal in a way that had nothing to do with sex.

Rodney got out of bed and rubbed his arm over his face when he realized he was crying. He shuffled carefully across the room and stopped just short of where John was standing. It was easier to see him now, though he was still mostly made of shadow.

“I’m a genius,” Rodney said. “But I’ve been acting like the stupidest man alive.”

He reached out, fumbling a bit before his hand landed on John’s shoulder. He traced it up to John’s neck, caressing the warm, bare skin there. John shuddered at the touch.

“You have to be sure,” John said, voice gone ragged. 

“Only an idiot would let you go.”

Rodney moved in closer, until he was pressed against John, until their mouths were practically touching, and Rodney could feel John’s breath against his face. His heart was pounding, his skin was flushed, and still he hesitated.

“Did you flip a coin?” he asked.

“No,” John said, voice breathless.

“Good.”

Rodney leaned in the rest of the way, pressing his lips against John’s. It was chaste for all of a second or two, and then they were kissing like hungry, wild things, arms wrapped tightly around each other, and there was no comparison to kissing raw versus kissing with a mouth guard. 

When time stood still again, neither of them noticed.

*o*o*o*

“What’s it like?” Miko asked, chin resting on her hands.

Rodney rolled his eyes. “It’s not like anything.”

“It must be like _something_. Better than a regular relationship, right? Is it magical?”

“This isn’t one of your K-dramas. Get back to work.”

As if Rodney could ever sufficiently describe what it was like, being soulbonded to John. How amazing it was to be able to touch him whenever Rodney wanted, to sleep naked together, to kiss with abandon. It was more than that, though. It was a feeling, deep down, that John would always be there for him. It was such a foreign concept to Rodney that thinking about it sometimes brought him inexplicably to tears.

John popped into the lab at lunch time, immediately sliding into Rodney’s personal space and embracing him from behind.

“Who broke records in the simulator today? This guy!”

“I’m working, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Rodney grumbled half-heartedly. He tipped his head to the side so John could nuzzle at his neck.

“It’s time for lunch, in case _you_ hadn’t noticed. Come on. Gotta keep that big brain of yours lubed up.”

Rodney’s face flamed, because of course the word ‘lube’ brought to mind recent bedroom activities. And of course John could tell exactly what he was thinking.

“How long a lunch break can you take?” John murmured in Rodney’s ear.

If Miko hadn’t been watching them with hearts in her eyes, Rodney would’ve kissed John with deadly intent. It wasn’t like he hadn’t fantasized about bending John over the lab table and having his wicked way with him.

“Jesus, Rodney,” John said, and when Rodney turned around, he could see the flush climbing up John’s face.

“I’m going to lunch,” Rodney said over his shoulder. “Don’t screw anything up while I’m gone.”

He was the boss, after all. It was his prerogative if he wanted to take a nice, long, leisurely lunch with his boyfriend. They might even get around to eating some food.

They walked out of the lab hand-in-hand, desire passing between them unspoken. Rodney was well aware how lucky he was. He’d never wanted a soulmate. Hadn’t even really been in the market for a serious relationship. But he’d literally stumbled his way into both.

It wasn’t quite unicorns and rainbows, but it was just about perfect for Rodney.

**Author's Note:**

>  **AN:** When I saw that the most recent prompt at sga_Saturday included ‘stumble’, for some reason I immediately thought of this fic that I started who-knows-when (years, people, it’s been years). I’d only written the first scene, but that prompt inspired me to finish this.
> 
> This is it, friends. One last fic for 2020. Happy New Year to all my readers and supporters, and I hope we find more things to be grateful for in 2021!


End file.
